THE Management of the University of Benin, UNIBEN, on Thursday said it has commenced the process of introducing new programs for study in the university to tackle current global challenges.
Speaking during an interaction with the media to mark her second year in office, Vice Chancellor of the university, Professor Lilian Imuetiyan Salami said her administration has also put machinery in motion to assist indigent students.
She said “The school recently introduce two course, Music and Psychology but there are others in the pipeline and we have started the process; some of them include Cyber Security Studies, Computer and Commerce in which case we are emphasizing e-commerce, we are also looking at Computer Science and Governance that is the study of e-governance, we are also looking at the Study of Data Management.
“We are putting our pen and paper to draw the proposals so that we can go through the processes to get the approval for their study in the University. We are pretty much in tune with the current trend in the world which is the blue business; we can’t be left out of the global trend that is why we are introducing these courses because we are having issues of cyber crime and others so we have to do something to comply with current realities.”
While admitting that finances remain the biggest challenge facing her administration, Professor Salami said she adopted a strategy of channeling 30 per cent of its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to offset inherited debt owed contractors and that the school spends N60 million monthly to provide electricity for the school.
On the recent students unrest when a penalty on late registration was imposed, she said “Part of the lessons that we learnt from the recent students protests over the imposition of penalty for late payment of school fees is that there are actually students who cannot actually pay their school, that could even pay N5,000, we have reintroduce the student work study initiative in addition, the director of that program is also sourcing for philanthropists to support the scheme and we are using the students union to identify the real indigent students and once we get those students, we will be able to assist them.”
-Vanguard
